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Consumer spending in the U.S. rose in January even as incomes dropped by the most in 20 years, showing households were weathering the payroll-tax increase by socking away less money in the bank. Household purchases, which account for about 70 percent of the economy, climbed 0.2 percent after a 0.1 percent gain the prior month, a Commerce Department report showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 76 economists called for a 0.2 percent advance. Incomes slumped 3.6 percent, sending the saving rate down to the lowest level since November 2007. Employment gains, the rebound in...

On February 3rd, 1913, one of the two most historic events in US history took place: the ratification of the 16th amendment, which established Congress' right to impose a Federal income tax on Americans, and overturned Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution which explicitly prohibited a general income tax. The amendment was brief and to the point, and read as follows: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." And with that, the US Federal Income...

Where do you fit in the 2012 ranking of total money income by age group in the United States? While we've previously built a tool where you can find out your percentile ranking among all individuals, men, women, families and households in the U.S., we thought it might be fun to break the data for individuals down a little differently - by age group! Our chart below reveals what that distribution looked like for 2012, as indicated by the curves showing the major income percentiles from the 10th through the 90th percentile for each indicated age group on the horizontal...

RALEIGH — Efforts are under way to make North Carolina the first state since Alaska in 1980 to eliminate taxes on total personal income. Competing proposals also would launch a pro-growth tax reform renaissance that would scrap corporate income taxes that discourage capital investment and savings. The John Locke Foundation introduced a plan Wednesday including those elements, along with a repeal of estate taxes and the retail sales tax at the state level. Researchers at the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C-based tax research group, are among those lauding the JLF plan. “The whole point is economic growth. It’s not...

Politicians typically talk about rising inequality and the sluggish recovery as separate phenomena, when they are in fact intertwined. Inequality stifles, restrains and holds back our growth. When even the free-market-oriented magazine The Economist argues — as it did in a special feature in October — that the magnitude and nature of the country’s inequality represent a serious threat to America, we should know that something has gone horribly wrong. ... There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically...

But let's take a look at that list of high-income-inequality states again. What do California, Arizona and New Mexico all have in common? I'll give you a hint: Texas comes in seventh on the high-income-inequality state list. That's right: The three states with the highest income inequality also all share a border with Mexico. But what about New York? Or Georgia? Or Illinois (which is the sixth-most-unequal state)? They are all hundreds of miles away from Mexico. Well, it turns out that all of those states have huge illegal immigrant populations too. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, every one...

All of this talk about taxing people who make 200k or 250k or more. What a joke. With the excessive printing of money, almost everyone in this country who has a job will make 200,000 thousand dollars or more. And, milk will be $12 a gallon, etc., ad nauseum. However, everyone will still fall under taxation rules when that happens. You're making more money, but everything rises in price to meet your income and now you're paying more in taxes. How can people be so foolish to vote these insane policies into effect? What about rental property? The next step...

The median net worth of American households has dropped to a 43-year low as the lower and middle classes appear poorer and less stable than they have been since 1969. According to a recent study by New York University economics professor Edward N. Wolff, median net worth is at the decades-low figure of $57,000 (in 2010 dollars). And as the numbers in his study reflect, the situation only appears worse when all the statistics are taken as a whole. According to Wolff, between 1983 and 2010, the percentage of households with less than $10,000 in assets (using constant 1995 dollars)...

From a recent Glenn Reynolds USA Today column [1]: So Washington gets fat, and it does so on money taken from the rest of the country. Just how fat have Washington and the Beltway counties gotten? According to the latest U.S. Census data, between 2000 and 2010 the richest of the Washington, D.C., area have accrued about twice as much new wealth as those not living in or around the area.Also, some Washington counties have gotten about twice as much new wealth as some of the other richest counties in the United States.An April 2012 Forbes article [2] lists...

I admit that I could have gone full Cassandra on CNBC’s Rick Santelli yesterday about the economy. Never go full Cassandra on TV. Today’s economic numbers do have a hint of Cassandra about them. First, Personal Income in October rose 0.0%. This is unwelcome news going into Christmas/Holiday season and for the housing market. Compare the growth of Personal Income prior to “The Great Recession” (yellow box) with post Great Recession. Oogh! Second, the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index New Orders fell to their lowest level since Q2 2009. Double oogh! And yesterday’s horrendous Q3 Personal Consumption print of +1.4% was...

“Identity theft, tax refund scams are really no less than a tsunami that is barreling towards us,” said U.S. attorney Wifredo Ferre... For victims like South Dade’s Lauri King, waiting for help from the Internal Revenue Service is getting harder. She still doesn’t know when the agency may get around to mailing out her refund... King filed her tax refund seven months ago. She expected to get her refund a few months later, but continues to wait for the IRS to finally act... “Just two weeks ago, I mentioned to my husband, did we ever get our IRS refund and...

Elizabeth Warren obtained federal fee waivers despite high 6-figure income and 8-figure net worthDid not pay her “fair share,” obtained PACER fee waivers in at least 50 federal districts 2005-2012 Posted by William A. Jacobson Sunday, October 14, 2012 at 5:30pm **SNIP** Warren falsely and without any legitimate legal basis claimed to be Cherokee for employment purposes. Warren also chintzed by failing to register for the Massachusetts Bar despite an active practice of law in Cambridge since the mid-1990s, thereby evading Bar registration dues. Howie Carr has a great column today about Warren’s class warfare phoniness. Add another example to...

Analysts say many other companies, including the White Castle hamburger chain, are considering employing fewer full-timers because of key features of the Affordable Care Act scheduled to go into effect in 2014. Under that law, large companies must provide affordable health insurance to employees working an average of at least 30 hours per week. If they do not, the companies can face fines of up to $3,000 for each employee who then turns to an exchange — an online marketplace — for insurance.

Consumer spending rose in August, thanks to higher gas prices, while incomes barely budged, government data showed Friday. The Commerce Department said consumer spending rose 0.5 percent in August from July, the biggest jump since February. The increase was led by a 1.7 percent surge in purchases of nondurable goods, reflecting the sharp 28.2 cents per gallon rise in gas prices during the month. Spending on durable goods rose 0.3 percent, helped by gains in auto sales. Spending on services rose just 0.2 percent. Income rose just 0.1 percent in August, reflecting the weak job market. Taking into account inflation,...

A large majority of likely voters believes all Americans should pay some federal income tax -- even if it is as little as one percent of what they make. Seventy-nine percent say everyone should pay something, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. That includes 85 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of independents and 71 percent of Democrats. According to the IRS, last year approximately 41 percent of tax filers did not pay federal income tax. The Tax Policy Center estimates that will increase to 46 percent this year. Most voters (73 percent) are at least somewhat familiar with...

September 18, 2012 By:  William McBride Lots of talk today about the half of the population that do not pay federal income taxes, based on Romney’s comment that 47 percent pay no income tax. The 47 percent number is an estimate of the share of the total population that pays no income tax, coming from the Tax Policy Center, which is in line with our estimate using IRS data, but slightly less than the 51 percent estimated by the Joint Committee on Taxation.However, the hard data from IRS tax returns indicates that about 41 percent of filers pay no...

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney claimed at a private fundraiser last spring that 47 percent of Americans pay no income taxes, he was mostly right. But that 47 percent still must pay a whole slew of other taxes. The claim that nearly half of Americans pay no income taxes is based on a 2011 finding from the Tax Policy Center, a joint tax research arm of the centrist Urban Institute and center-left Brookings Institution.

The selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate sent a powerful message - that the economy will be the key issue of this election. As I go back and forth arguing with my lefty pals we naturally disagree over what ails our economy. Their arguments are that we're not doing enough to tax the wealthy and put it in the hands of our government to spread the wealth around and get our economy moving again. I always point out things like our trillion dollar debt, looming entitlements collapse, ever increasing regulation, and continuous threats of higher taxes from...

Back in August 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote an Op-Ed titled "Welcome to the Recovery." Two years later, most Americans would be right to ask: What recovery? Yes, the economy is technically growing, and corporate profits are up. But the pace of growth during the Obama "recovery" has been so slow that it's leaving most Americans further behind. The latest sign: Real median household income has fallen 4.8% since the so-called recovery officially began in June 2009. That's a steeper decline than occurred during the recession itself.

Economy: Obama is touting "a new vision of an America in which prosperity is shared." But Obama's been promising to deliver on this "new vision" for years, while his policies have produced the opposite. After securing the Democrats' nomination in June 2008, for example, Obama said he'd bring "fiscal responsibility and shared prosperity." In 2009, he said his just-enacted economic strategy "is about far more than just recovery — it's about sustained growth and widely shared prosperity." And in 2011, he was touting a "framework for shared prosperity." So what has Obama actually delivered? Precious little prosperity and it sure...